It seems like part of declaring these species instinct is removing them from the endangered lists, which I suspect removes the legal protections those species h

It seems like part of declaring these species instinct is removing them from the endangered lists, which I suspect removes the legal protections those species have. In other words, if a species is erroneously declared extinct, the penalties we have for actually driving them extinct no longer apply. This seems like a very high cost of error, with little upside besides perhaps some reduction in administrative overhead (but then, how much overhead is there to having 21 more names on a list). Anyone have insight into what motivates removing species from the endangered list so aggressively?